Lady Elizabeth had already shot up into a tall, lithe figure; and her countenance developed the budding signs of that lively beauty which afterwards distinguished her. At this time, however, though she observes that many opportunities offered themselves of discovering her own personal charms, she protests herself to have been entirely ignorant of them; the exclusive admiration that was bestowed by her mother on her elder sister leading her to imagine herself rather ill-favoured than otherwise. There was no such blindness to the fascination of her person in after years, and her memoirs teem with amusing evidences of the high sense she entertained of her outward attractions. Among others is a passage in which she criticises the various portraits that have been painted of her; and though Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose portrait of her at Petworth seems charming enough, and Romney and Madame Lebrun exerted in turns, and more than once, their skill to transfer her graces to canvas, she declares they, none of them, have done justice either to her face or figure. The same candour, in exposing her thorough self-appreciation as regards her mental and moral excellences, is observable through the entertaining sketch of her career, and gives at first the impression that one is listening to the weakest and vainest woman that ever breathed. A little further acquaintance, however, removes this notion almost altogether. When a woman has been sought and admired all her life for her beauty, grace, sense, wit, and good nature by the highest and most distinguished personages of her age, it would seem more shocking than the grossest display of vanity to affect a mincing reserve and humility in speaking of her own merits.